FANCIFUL MEDICAL IDEA MAY BECOME A REALITY

Two local firms eye role for Google Glass in the health field

Fast forward a few years, when doctors may get your vital signs displayed on computerized eyeglasses the minute they walk into the examination room.

If a skin blemish is discovered during a physical, your doctor might call up a picture of diseased skin on the high-tech glasses for comparison before making a referral to a dermatologist.

These are some potential medical uses for Google Glass — a wearable computer resembling eyeglasses that allows users to take pictures, search the Internet and do other tasks.

Right now, these are just fanciful ideas about what Google Glass might do in a medical clinic. But Palomar Health and Qualcomm Life, a subsidiary of San Diego wireless giant Qualcomm, have started a new project in San Diego to see if fantasy can become reality.

The pair have teamed up to work on developing medical applications for wireless, wearable technology such as Google Glass. They formed an incubator called Glassomics, which wants to attract developers to write medical apps for computer glasses, smart watches, sensors and other gear worn on the body.

“We are going to see a revolution going forward of wearable computational devices, with Google Glass being the first one out of the gate,” said Orlando Portale, chief innovation officer of Palomar Health. “We’re hoping to have an organization here that’s collaborative where people who are interested in this space can work with us.”

Palomar Health and Qualcomm Life envision developers building apps for Google Glass to replace television monitors in operating rooms so surgeons wouldn’t have to look up from procedures. Another concept could use Qualcomm’s peer-to-peer AllJoyn software platform to allow doctors to share real-time patient test results with colleagues via Google Glass.

“We suspect there may be opportunities, but we don’t know,” said Don Jones, vice president of global strategy for Qualcomm Life. “That’s what we hope to get out of the developers’ environment.”

Launching new medical technology is not easy. There can be regulatory hurdles. Hospitals want not only better care but also a return on investment.

From 2001 through 2011, U.S. health care spending nearly doubled from $1.5 trillion to $2.7 trillion, according to the West Health Institute, a San Diego-based group that promotes technology to lower medical costs.

“We’re seeing a lot of experiments, a lot of trials, a lot of apps and a lot of products that are connected wirelessly or are using smart devices,” said Freeman Rose, vice president of Research, Development and Engineering at West Health. “What’s not clear is which of these things actually meet the criteria of providing some element of health care at a lower cost.”

Though Google Glass has gotten much press, the product itself won’t become available to the general public until early next year. For now, about 10,000 people — or “explorers” as Google calls them — are trying out the $1,500 glasses.

In June, Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps predicted that 21.6 million people would be willing to buy the computerized eyeglasses. Her forecast was based on a survey of 4,600 consumers.